Image metadata accompanies image data stored within an image file and provides information about the image data. Examples of image metadata, in the context of a digital camera, include focal length, aperture, copyright information, and number of pixels. Some metadata values, such as focal length and aperture, are generated at capture time. Other metadata values, such as copyright information, author information, etc., may be generated by users at image acquisition time or a later time.
The different types of metadata, stored within a header field of an image file, facilitate organizing and managing image data. In particular, the header field/portion of an image file is modified to render descriptive information about the image. In fact, some image file formats include a header field that supports entry of arbitrary data. Such a location is potentially available to store additional metadata through the use of a header editor. Thereafter, an image file management utility reads the image file metadata and filters and/or organizes the image files for users based upon specified search/organization criteria. Thus, image metadata, when combined with such an image file management utility, can prove highly valuable in efforts to organize a large quantity of image files. However, the descriptive metadata that facilitates such organization efforts is potentially entered in a variety of non-standardized manners by a variety of users. In the absence of a consistent metadata rendering scheme, the ability of image file filtering/organizing utilities to present a set of saved image files in an organized manner is significantly limited.